Anthony Di Giovanni Portfolio
context
In my transition to my final year I'm interested in single-player game design.
I decided to use the Hammer software to create levels for 2 reasons:
- to use known games ( half life 2 )
- take advantage of their advanced programming
In order to offer a single player fps experience
Release Date
6/01/2024
Platform
PC
Half life 2 - C18
As I was working on a personal project, I first wondered what workflow I was going to use. Shortly afterwards, I discovered the videos of a level designer: Steve Lee. Thanks to his videos, I was able to use his workflow in this personal project using a first written version of the level : the "Skateboard first approach
We imagine we want to create a vehicle the top approach will make us focus on the product with his most ambitious form and we will try to make for the very start of the project
in step 1,2,3 it leads to : we don’t have a proper car to drive until the very end of the process ( stressful , low quality because no test)
bottom approach :
focus on the goal : deliver a vehicle : we have a working version of something we want to achieve from the very first step.
Text first
Half life 2 - map - Outside war
Goals : what am i trying to do , why & how
- Create a level where the player is in a city and has to escape from the police
- context: police raids like in the beginning of half life 2, an alley where police control the situation against resistance fighters
Elements
- Guards
- Gordon's suit
- Crowbar
- Weapons ( pistol ⇒ machine gun )
- Physgun
- Civilian & rebel
- Crates ( protections )
- Car (blockers)
Constraint
- Urban guerrilla atmosphere
- Verticality
- Good rhythm
Gameplay beats
The player is in a flat and has to reach the sewers to cross the city and escape
Questions
- How do you get the player to break the law and attack the police (players who don't know the lore of Half Life)?
- How do you change moods in the same level?
Sequence
- The player is in a building where he finds his equipment and his crowbar.
- He exits the flat down the stairs and comes across a dead resistance fighter who allows him to get his weapon (a pistol).
- Once out of the building, the player finds himself in an alleyway where he is blocked by a vehicle and a barrier with crates that he can push or destroy.
- they can walk around freely as long as they don't enter one of the forbidden zones
- he finds himself blocked by a policeman who asks him to move and a force field in front of him, he has to force his way through in order to deactivate the force field.
- the fighting begins
- Once he's rid of the policemen, the player can enter the outpost where the switch to deactivate the force field is located.
- Once the force field is down, the player comes across police officers who are better equipped than before and shoot at him from the other side of a bridge. The player can either fight or flee through the sewers by destroying the wooden barricades.
- Once in the sewers, a different atmosphere is present, with the bodies of policemen and zombies strewn across the ground.
- the player quickly comes across zombies surrounding him/her
- the player fights them
- he can finally reach the lower part of the sewers and escape
- end of level
Release Date
Ongoing
Platform
PC
My goal is to train myself to design an interesting solo level that benefits from a good rhythm.